A Bump on a Blog: The Art of Persuasive Writing: A Few Pointers

Saturday, May 1, 2010

The Art of Persuasive Writing: A Few Pointers

We use persuasion every day:

• Convincing myself to use the treadmill every morning.

• Begging your parents to let you stay out later.

• Assuring your teachers that you will study for a test.

Persuasion is a life-long skill, but do you realize how much you actually use it? This video will help you understand some of the main characteristics of persuasion, plus some real-life examples.

Video from “Education With Vision”

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Shakespeare By Numbers

(Thanks to "Shakespeare in American Communities")

* Shakespeare's estimated vocabulary: between 15,000 and 29,000 words (at least double or triple the vocabulary of other great English writers!)
* Total speeches in Shakespeare's works: 31,959
* Total lines in Shakespeare's works: 118,406
* Total words in Shakespeare's works: 884,647
* Plays with most rhyming lines: Love's Labour's Lost (62.2%) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (43.4%)
* Characters with most lines: Hamlet (1,569), Richard III (1,161) and Iago from Othello (1,117)
* Longest play: Hamlet (4,042 lines)
* Shortest play: The Comedy of Errors (1,787 lines)

Blogging Rules

1. You will be required to furnish me with your Email address and password to your blog. This will only be used to remove materials that are not school appropriate. If you are uncomfortable with this, set up a separate Email account and password for just this purpose. I will test this address and password to make sure it works. If it doesn't, or it is ever changed, your blog will be blocked.

2. Please, no last names, school names or addresses. No personal information (last names, contact information, pictures, etc...) should be included anywhere in your blog. This parallels what the school district's policy is regarding these matters. Even Email addresses should not be made public on the blog.

3. Do not link to your personal blog/journal from your school blog; you might reveal information on there that you don't want to reveal on your school blog. Use your online content as an extension of the classroom, and in doing so, leave anything that unsaid in the classroom unsaid online. Make sure that anything you write in a blog or link to your blog is something that you understand and want to be associated with.

4. If you want to write your opinion on a topic, make sure you're not going to be offensive to anyone as you write it. Use constructive/productive/purposeful criticism, supporting any idea, comment, or critique you have with evidence.

5. Always make sure you check over your post for spelling errors, grammar errors, and your use of words. Remember that this IS a class project, so it should be grammatically correct. That doesn’t mean you can’t use slang, for example, but at least spell it correctly!

6. Never disrespect anyone in your blog, whether it's a person, an organization, or just a general idea. You don't want someone making a stab at what you are passionate about; don't do it to someone else. All students - and teachers - should be careful and conscious about what they write because their blogs exist on the Internet, which is a public place. Believe it or not, people from other states and countries read our blogs, so only post what you want the world to know. This means that all writing should be school-appropriate, respectful, and free from harmful, hateful, or offensive language.

7. Don't write about other people without permission; when you DO get their permission, use first names only. Never share someone else’s last name.

8. Watch your language! We're not at home. We are at school. This has to be school appropriate.

9. Make sure things you write about are factual. Don't be posting about things that aren't true.

10. Keep it education-oriented. Don’t discuss your out-of-school plans for the week. Information and ideas on the blog should only be on school-related topics. More specifically, your blogs should deal with ideas related to what we are doing in class. These blogs are not places to socialize or meet other people. One shouldn't try to make friends as if it were Myspace. The key to safe blogging is to use your own good judgment in what you say or do.

11. Students and teachers have the right to delete any comments posted by someone else on their blogs that they do not feel comfortable with. Some good rules would be to consistently check your blog, and if any comments come up from people you don't know, report it to your teacher right away. Do not reply to those comments.

12. Be sure that anything you write you are proud of. It can and will come back to haunt you if you don't. In the future, when you are looking for a job, it will be possible for an employer to discover some immature things posted when you were younger. I'm sure that nobody would want this to happen, but it will if unnecessary things are written.

13. Do not plagiarize; Give credit where it is due.

14. Do not be afraid to express your ideas, but don’t overgeneralize or make derogatory/inflammatory remarks. Do not post anything that is not school appropriate. I will remove it.

15. Take all online content creation seriously, posting only things that are meaningful and taking your time when you write.

16. DO NOT CONDUCT A CHAT SESSION. Do not use your public writing (blog posts, comments, discussion topics, wiki edits) as a chat room. Instead, save IM language for private conversations.

17. Never access another student's account in order to pose as them or look at their personal content; instead, advise them when they haven't logged out of their blog.

18. Only post photos that are school appropriate and either in the creative commons or correctly cited. If necessary, you will have to wait until you get Sims’ permission. When posting a photo or video, be sure to cite where it came from. Say something like, “Photo by Harry Blackman” or “Video from Teachertube.com”.

19. Do not spam (including, but not limited to, meaningless messages, mass messages, and repetitive messages)

20. Remember blogging is much more than writing posts; taking the time to leave comments on posts to provide feedback or ask questions is an important part of both the readers and blogger’s learning process.

21. Since the use of discussion boards, podcasts, learning networks, and blogs is a way of differentiating instruction, there is always an alternative assignment for students who wish not to participate in the online activity.

Infractions of these rules will lead to the following consequences in order of severity and number of offense:
1. Warning by teacher, and editing or deletion of offending post/comment/picture/video, failure of assignment. Personal apology to those offended by the infraction (individual students, one class, or whole blogging community).
2. Temporary loss of blogging privileges, editing or deletion of offending post/comment/picture/video, failure of assignment. Personal apology to those offended by the infraction (individual students, one class, or whole blogging community).
3. Permanent loss of blogging privileges (duration of semester), editing or deletion of offending post/comment, failure of assignment. Personal apology to those offended by the infraction (individual students, one class, or whole blogging community).

A Bump on a Blog

Saturday, May 1, 2010

The Art of Persuasive Writing: A Few Pointers

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